Gwinnett County police are urging residents not to dismiss emergency calls after a recent reverse 911 notification about a missing child was widely mistaken for a scam.
The automated call went out last Thursday when police needed help finding a 6-year-old who wandered away from home in Gwinnett County near Buford. However, many people ignored it.
“People assumed it was a scam,” said Cpl. Ryan Winderweedle.
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The child was eventually found safe in the Buford area, but Channel 2 Gwinnett County Bureau Chief Matt Johnson learned the call mistakenly reached more people than intended.
As a result, it appeared as “Scam Likely” on many phones, leading some to warn others on social media.
“A filter was wrongly selected, so the message went out to a large number of people,” Winderweedle said.
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The reverse 911 system works by dialing numbers registered within a specific distance from the incident location. Police have since corrected the issue and emphasized the importance of these alerts.
“That’s one of the quickest ways to get the public, who is local to that location, aware of the incident,” Winderweedle said.
To prevent confusion in the future, police are asking residents to save their emergency notification number—770-513-5799—as a contact.
“If you were to save that number as a contact in your contacts list, that way you could save it as Gwinnett police,” Winderweedle said.
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